Tuesday, June 14, 2005

Our Favorite Waiter

Yesterday was our wedding anniversary. We decided to go to our favorite restaurant: Raaga. Raaga’s food is good but the menu is not extraordinary. Actually, I haven’t really found any restaurant that serves extraordinary food here in the Washington D.C. region. What makes Raaga special for us is Mustafa. He is our favorite waiter.

What makes him the ideal waiter? He knows when we want his help and he knows when to leave us alone. If I begin looking around, he will see that from the corner of his eye and signal that he will be with me in just a moment. He always serves onions and pickle with our meal. He only does that for us, that I can see. Although chai is not on the menu, he makes it personally for us, and only he makes it right, (yeah, that’s right, the fellow from Bangladesh makes proper chai and the waiters from India give us teabag tea). It’s the little things that make a great waiter.

Yesterday we finished our meal and wanted our chai. Mustafa took our plates and then disappeared before we could request it. That seemed odd. Usually he is so attentive.

He came back a moment latter with a small plate. On it was rasmalai, gulab jamun and carrot halwa. He had place a candle in the carrot halwa and lit it. What a nice touch! And then we ordered our chai, which was just the way we like it.

When the check came, there was no charge for the special dessert, even though it was worth easily 8 or 9 dollars. Ordinarily I will tip about 10 to 15 percent. For Mustafa, I tip between 20 to 25 percent. Last night I left 30 percent. But service like that is hard to put a price on.